The Book of Skulls (10 page)

21. Timothy

I try to be cheerful, I try not to complain, but sometimes I get pushed too far. This trek through the desert at high noon, for example. You have to be a masochist to impose something like this on yourself, even for the sake of living ten thousand years. That part of it is crap, of course: unreal, idiotic. What
is
real is the heat. My guess is that it’s 95, 100, even 105 degrees out here. Not even April yet, and we’re in a furnace. The famous dry heat of Arizona that they keep telling you about; sure, it’s hot, but it’s dry heat, you don’t feel it. Crap.
I
feel it. My jacket is off and my shirt is open and I’m roasting. If I didn’t have this crappy fair skin of mine I’d take the shirt off altogether, but then I’d fry. Oliver already has his shirt off, and he’s blonder than I am; maybe his skin doesn’t burn, peasant skin, Kansas skin. Every step is a struggle. And how much farther do we have to go, anyway? Five miles? Ten?

The car is a long way behind us. It’s half past twelve now, and we’ve been walking since noon, quarter of, something like that. The pathway is about eighteen inches wide, and in places it’s narrower than that. In places, actually, there isn’t any pathway at all, and we have to hop and scramble over tangles of underbrush. We plod single file like four freaked-out Navahos stalking Custer’s army. Even the lizards laugh at us. Jesus, I don’t know how anything manages to stay alive here, the lizards, the plants, baked to pieces like this. The ground isn’t really soil and it isn’t really sand; it’s something dry and crumbly that makes a soft crunching sound as we step on it. The silence here magnifies the sound. The silence is scary. We haven’t been talking. Eli plods ahead as though he’s rushing toward the Holy Grail. Ned huffs and puffs: he isn’t strong and this hike is using him up. Oliver, bringing up the rear, is, as usual, completely sealed into himself. He could be an astronaut marching across the moon. Occasionally Ned cuts in to tell us something about the plant life. I never realized he was such a botany freak. There are very few of the tremendous vertical cacti here, the saguaros, though I see a few, fifty or sixty feet tall, some way back from the path. What we have instead, thousands of them, is a weird thing about six feet high, with a gnarled gray woody trunk and a lot of long dangling clusters of spines and green bumpy things. The chainfruit cholla, Ned calls it, and warns us to keep far away from it. The spines are sharp. So we avoid it; but there’s another cholla here, the teddybear cholla, that’s not so easy to avoid. The teddybear is a bummer. Little stubby plants a foot or two high, covered with thousands of fuzzy straw-colored spines: you look at a teddybear the wrong way, and the spines jump up and bite you. I swear they do. My boots are covered with prickles. The teddybear breaks easily and chunks come loose and roll away; they lie scattered everywhere, a lot of them right in the path. Ned says that each chunk will take root eventually and become a whole new plant. We have to watch our steps all the time for fear of coming down on one. You can’t just kick a teddybear chunk aside if it’s in your way, either. I tried that and the cactus stuck to my boot, and I reached down to pull it off, only to get it stuck to my fingertips next. A hundred needles jabbing me at once. Like fire. I yelled. Most uncool screams. Ned had to pry it away, using two twigs as handles. My fingers still burn. Dark, tiny points are buried in the flesh. I wonder if they’ll get infected. There’s plenty of other cactus here, too—barrel cactus, prickly pear, six or seven more that not even Ned can put names to. And leafy trees with thorns, mesquite, acacia. All the plants here are hostile. Don’t touch me, they say, don’t touch me or you’ll be sorry. I wish I was anywhere else. But we walk on, on, on. I’d trade Arizona for the Sahara, even up, throwing in half of New Mexico to sweeten the deal. How much longer? How much hotter? Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap.

“Hey, look here!” Eli, pointing. To the left of the path, half hidden in a yellow tangle of cholla: a big round boulder, as big as a man’s torso, dark rough stone different in texture and composition from the local chocolate-colored sandstone. This is black volcanic rock, basalt, granite, diabase, one of those. Eli crouches by it and, picking up a piece of wood, begins to push the cactus away from it. “See?” he says. “The eyes? The nose?” He’s right. Great deep eyesockets are visible. A tremendous triangular gouge of a nose-hole. And down at ground level, a row of immense teeth, an upper jaw, the teeth biting into the sandy soil.

A skull.

It looks a thousand years old. We can see traces of more delicate carving, indicating cheekbones, brow ridges, and other features; but most of this has been obliterated by time. A skull, though. Unmistakably a skull. It’s a road marker, telling us that that which we seek is not much farther down the road—or perhaps warning us that we ought to turn back now. Eli stands a long time, studying the skull. Ned. Oliver. They’re fascinated by it. A cloud passes over us, shadowing the boulder, changing our view of its contours, and it seems to me now that the empty eyes have turned and are staring at us. The heat’s getting me. Eli says, “It’s probably pre-Columbian. They brought it with them from Mexico, I’d imagine.” We peer ahead, into the heat haze. Three great saguaros, like columns, block our view. We must pass between them. And beyond? The skullhouse itself? No doubt. Suddenly I wonder what I’m doing here, how I ever let myself into this craziness. What had seemed like a joke, a lark, now seems all too real.

Never to die. Oh, crap! How can such things be? We’ll waste days here, finding out. An adventure in lunacy. Skulls in the road. Cactus. Heat. Thirst. Two must die if two are to live. All the mystical garbage Eli’s been spouting now is summed up for me in that globe of rough black stone, so solid, so undeniable. I’ve committed myself to something that’s altogether beyond my understanding, and there may well be danger in it for me. But there’s no turning back now.

22. Eli

And if there had been no skullhouse here? And if we had come to the end of the path, only to find a wall of impenetrable thorns and spines? I confess I was expecting that. This whole expedition just one more failure, one more fiasco of Eli the
schmeggege.
The skull by the road turning out to be a false clue, the manuscript a dreamy fable, the newspaper article a hoax, the X on our map a mere pointless prank. Nothing before us but cactus and mesquite, a scraggly wasteland, an armpit of a desert where not even pigs would deign to shit, and then what would I have done? I would have turned with great dignity to my three weary companions and said, “Gentlemen, I have been deceived, and you have been misled. We have chased the wild goose.” With an apologetic half-smile playing about the corners of my lips. And then they seize me calmly, without malice, having known all along that it was bound to come to this in the end, and they strip me, they thrust the wooden stake into my heart, they nail me to a towering saguaro, they press me to death beneath flat rocks, they rub chollas into my eyes, they burn me alive, they bury me chest-deep in an anthill, they castrate me with their fingernails, all the while solemnly chanting,
Schmeggege, schlemihl, schlemazel, schmendrick, schlep!
Patiently I accept my well-earned punishment. I am no stranger to humiliation. I am never surprised by disaster.

Humiliation? Disaster? As in the Margo fiasco? My most recent major debacle. It still stings. Last October, early in the semester, a rainy, foggy night. We had some first-rate pot, alleged Panama Red that had come to Ned through the alleged homosexual underground, and we passed the pipe, Timothy, Ned, and I, with Oliver, of course, abstaining, piously sipping some cheap red wine. One of the Rasoumovsky quartets played in the background, rising eloquently above the drumbeats of the rain: as we soared high, Beethoven gave us a mystic noise, a second cellist unaccountably seeming to join the group, even an oboe at odd moments, a transcendental bassoon below the strings. The berserk five-dimensional musicology of the stoned. Ned hadn’t hyped us: the dope was superb. And somehow I found myself drifting, getting into a talking trip, a confessional trip, unloading everything, saying suddenly to Timothy that what I regretted most of all was that I have never in my life made it even once with what I’d consider a really beautiful girl.

Timothy, sympathetic, concerned, asked me who I’d consider a really beautiful girl. I was silent, contemplating my options. Ned, being helpful, suggested Raquel Welch, Catherine Deneuve, Lainie Kazan. At last, coming on with marvelous ingenuousness, I blurted, “I consider Margo a really beautiful girl.” Timothy’s Margo. Timothy’s
goyishe
goddess, the golden
shikse.
Having said it, I felt a swiftly sketched series of quick interchanges of dialogue resonating through my cannabis-ridden mind, a lengthy passage of words, and then time, as it will do when it is under the influence of pot, inverted itself so that I heard my entire scenario being performed, each line arriving strictly on cue. Timothy was asking me, quite earnestly, if Margo turned me on. I assured him, just as earnestly, that she did. He wanted to know, then, if I’d feel less inadequate, more fulfilled, if I were to make it with her. Hesitantly now, wondering what his game was, I answered in vague circumlocutions, only to hear him say, astoundingly, that he would arrange everything for tomorrow night. Arrange what, I asked? Margo, he said. He would set me up with Margo, as an act of Christian charity.

“And would she—”

“Sure she would. She thinks you’re cute.”

“We all think you’re cute, Eli.” That was Ned.

“But I couldn’t—she wouldn’t—how—what—”

“I bestow her upon you,” said Timothy magnificently. The grand seigneur, making a lordly gesture. “I can’t let my friends walk around in a state of frustration and unrequited longing. Tomorrow at eight, her place. I’ll tell her to expect you.”

“It seems like a cheat,” I said, growing morose. “Too easy. Unreal.”

“Don’t be an ass. Accept it as vicarious experience. Like going to the movies, only more intimate.”

“And more tactile,” said Ned.

“I think you’re putting me on,” I told Timothy.

“Scout’s honor! She’s yours!”

He began describing Margo’s preferences in bed, her special erogenous zones, the little signals they used. I caught the spirit of the thing, flew high and higher, got myself into a laughter trip, began capping Timothy’s graphic descriptions with scabrous fantasies of my own. Of course, when I crashed an hour or two later I was certain Timothy
had
been putting me on, and that tumbled me into a dark abyss. For I had always been convinced that the Margos of this world are not for me. The Timothys would fuck their way through whole brigades of Margos, but I would have never a one. In truth I worshiped her from afar. The prototypical
shikse,
the flower of Aryan womanhood, slim and long-legged, two inches taller than I am (it seems so much more, when the girl is taller than you!), silky golden hair, sly blue eyes, upturned button nose, wide agile lips. A strong girl, a lively girl, a star basketball player (Oliver himself respected her abilities on the court), an outstanding scholar, a wry and supple wit: why, she was frightening, numbingly perfect, one of those flawless female creatures that our aristocracy spawns in such multitudes, born to rule serenely over country estates or to prance with poodles down Second Avenue. Margo for me? My sweaty hairy body to cover hers? My stubbly cheek to rub against her satiny skin? Yes, and frogs would couple with comets. To Margo I must seem something coarse and grubby, the pathetic representative of an inferior species. Any commerce between us would be unnatural, an alloying of silver and brass, a mixing of alabaster and charcoal. I dismissed the whole project from my mind. But at lunch Timothy reminded me of my date. It’s impossible, I said, giving him six swift excuses—study, a paper due, a difficult translation, and so forth. He swept my feeble temporizings aside. Report to her apartment at eight, he said. I felt a wave of terror. “I can’t,” I insisted. “You’re prostituting her, Timothy. What am I supposed to do, walk in, unzip my fly, jump on top? There’s no way it would work out. You can’t make a fantasy come true just by waving your magic wand.” Timothy shrugged.

I assumed that the matter was ended. Oliver had basketball practice that night. Ned went to the movies. About half past seven Timothy excused himself. Library work, he said, see you at ten. I was alone in the apartment we shared. Unsuspecting. Busied myself with my paper. At eight a key turning in the door; Margo entered; a ravishing smile, molten gold. For me, panic, consternation. “Timothy here?” she asked, casually locking the door behind her. Thunder in my chest. “Library,” I blurted. “Back at ten.” No place to hide for me. Margo pouted. “I was sure I’d find him here. Well, it’s his tough luck. Are you very busy, Eli?” A sparkling blue-eyed wink. She draped herself serenely on the couch.

“I’ve been doing this paper,” I said. “On the irregular forms of the verb
to—
”

“How fascinating! Would you like to smoke?”

I understood. They had set it up. A conspiracy to make me happy, whether I liked it or not. I felt patronized, used, mocked. Should I order her to leave? No,
schmendrick,
don’t be dumb. She’s yours for two hours. To hell with the moral frills. The end justifies the means. Here’s your chance and you won’t get another. I swaggered toward the couch. Eli, swaggering, yes! She had two fat joints, professionally rolled. Coolly she lit one, pulled deep, handed it to me; my wrist shook, I nearly jabbed the burning end of the joint into her arm in my tremor as I took it from her. Raw stuff; I coughed; she patted my back.
Schlemihl. Schlep.
She inhaled and flashed her eyebrows in an “oh, wow!” at me. The pot did nothing for me at all, though; I was too tense, and the adrenaline in me burned away the effect before it could take hold. I was conscious of the reek of my perspiration. Rapidly the stick was down to a roach. Margo, already looking stoned, proffered the other one. I shook my head. “Later,” I said.

She rose and prowled around the room. “It’s awfully hot in here, don’t you think?” What a cliché number! A clever girl like Margo could have been capable of better. She stretched. Yawned. She was wearing tight white hip-huggers and a skimpy top, flat tawny midriff bare. No bra, no panties, obviously: the little hummocks of her nipples were visible, and the slacks, clinging skintight to her round, small buttocks, revealed no telltale underwear creases. Ah, Eli, you observant devil, you suave and skillful manipulator of womanflesh! “So hot in here,” she said, stony-dreamy. Off with the top. Favoring me with an innocent smile, as if to say: we’re all old friends, we don’t need to fret about silly taboos, why should tits be more sacred than elbows? Her breasts were medium-big, full, high, marvelously firm, undoubtedly the most successful breasts I had ever seen. I sought ways of looking at them without seeming to. At the movies it’s easier; you don’t have an I-thou relationship with what’s happening on screen. She began an astrology rap, trying to put me at ease, I suppose. Much stuff about the conjunction of planets in the so-and-so house. I could only jabber in response. Smoothly she glided into palm reading: that was her new bag, the mysteries of the crevices. “The gypsies mostly rip the public off,” she said seriously, “but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some substance to the basic idea. You see, your whole future life is programmed into the DNA molecules, and they govern the patterns of the palm of your hand. Here, let me have a look.” Taking my hand, drawing me down next to her on the couch. How idiotic I felt, practically a male virgin in my attitude if not in actual experiential qualifications, needing to be coaxed into the obvious. Margo bent low over my palm, tickling me. “This, you see, that’s the life line—oh, it’s long, it’s
very
long!” I sneaked covert glances at her headlights while she did her palmistry number. “And this,” she said, “that’s the mount of Venus. You see this line angling in here? It tells me that you’re a man of powerful passions but that you restrain them, you repress a lot. Isn’t that so?” All right. I’ll play your game, Margo. My arm suddenly around her shoulders, my hand groping for her breasts. “Oh, yes, Eli, yes, yes!” Hamming it up. A clinch; a smeary kiss. Her lips were parted and I did the expected. But I felt no passions, powerful or otherwise. All this seemed formal, a minuet, something programmed from outside; I couldn’t relate to it, to the whole idea of making it with Margo. Unreal. unreal, unreal. Even when she slithered free of me and dropped the hip-huggers, revealing sharp hipbones, taut boyish buttocks, tight off-yellow curls, I felt no desire. She smiled at me, beckoned, invited me. For her this was no more apocalyptic than a handshake, a peck on the cheek. For me the galaxies upheaved. How easy it should have been for me. Drop the pants, get on her, inside her, move the hips, oh ah oh ah, hey wow groovy! But I suffered from sex-in-the-head; I was too preoccupied with the notion of Margo as unattainable symbol of perfection to realize that Margo was very much attainable and not even all that perfect—pale scar of appendectomy; faint stretch marks on her hips, the terminal moraines of a much chunkier preadolescent girl; thighs a shade too thin.

So I blew it. Yes, I stripped, and yes, we scampered to the bed, and yes, I couldn’t get it up, and yes, Margo helped me, and at last libido triumphed over mortification and I became properly stiff and throbbing, and then, wild bull of the pampas, I flung myself at her, clawing, grappling, frightening her with my ferocity, practically raping her, only to have the wick soften at the critical instant of insertion, and then—oh, yes, blunder upon blunder, gaucherie upon gaucherie, Margo alternately terrified and amused and solicitous, until at last came consummation, followed almost instantly by eruption, followed by chasms of self-contempt and craters of revulsion. I couldn’t bear to look at her. I rolled free, hid in the pillows, reviled myself, reviled Timothy, reviled D. H. Lawrence. “Can I help you?” Margo asked, stroking my sweaty back. “Please go,” I said. “Please. And don’t say anything to anyone.” But of course she did. They all knew. My clumsiness, my absurd incompetence, my seven varieties of ambiguity culminating eventually in seven species of impotence. Eli the
schmeggege,
blowing his big chance with the grooviest wench he’ll ever touch. Another in his long series of lovingly crafted fiascos. And we might have had another here, slogging through cactusville to ultimate disappointment, and the three of them might well have said, at the end of our trek, “Well, what else should we have expected from Eli?” But the skullhouse was there.

The pathway wound up a gentle grade, taking us through ever more dense thickets of cholla and mesquite, until, abruptly, we came to a broad sandy clearing. From left to right stretched a series of black basalt skulls, similar to the one we had seen farther back but much smaller, about the size of basketballs, set in the sand at intervals of perhaps twenty inches. On the far side of the row of skulls, some fifty yards beyond, we saw the House of Skulls crouching like a sphinx in the desert: a fairly large one-story building, flattopped, with coarse yellow-brown stucco walls. Seven columns of white stone decorated its windowless facade. The effect was one of stark simplicity, broken only by the frieze running along the pediment: skulls in low relief, presenting their left profiles. Sunken cheeks, hollow nostrils, huge round eyes. The mouths gaped wide in grisly grins. The large sharp teeth, carefully delineated, seemed poised for a fierce snap. And the tongues—ah, a truly sinister touch, skulls with tongues!—the tongues were twisted into elegant, horrid sideways S-curves, the tips protruding just past the teeth, flickering like the forked tongues of serpents. There were dozens of these reduplicated skulls, obsessively identical, frozen in weird suspension, one after another after another marching out of sight around the corners of the building; they had the nightmarish quality I detect in most pre-Columbian Mexican art. They would have been more appropriate, I felt, along the rim of some altar on which living hearts were cut with obsidian knives from quivering breasts.